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Nauvoo
The Nauvoo was a generational ship constructed at Tycho Station. Round and stubby, it was shaped as a cylinder, just over two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. Four Donnager-class battleships would fit in her belly and not touch the walls. It was intended to be populated by thousands of Mormons and travel beyond The Sol System, to Tau Ceti. The command and control at the top of the ship and the main engines and the associated parts of engineering at the bottom could almost have belonged to a standard craft connected by a pair of kilometers-long shafts, one for a keel elevator to move people and another that gave access to the skin of the drum. The secondary car, stored on the exterior, could hold a dozen people. Everything else was built to spin. Ten levels of environmental engineering, crew quarters, temples, schools, wastewater treatment, machine shops, and forges, and at the center, the vast interior. Eros Incident During the Eros incident, the Nauvoo was being constructed at Tycho Station, Fred Johnson of the OPA used her communications array to contact the crew of ''Tachi'' after they escaped from the ''Donnager'' when it was attacked by unknown stealth ships. When the Tachi now renamed Rocinante arrived at Tycho, the crew were amazed at the sheer scale of the Nauvoo. When the protomolecule was unleashed on Eros by Protogen; Joesphus Miller came up with an audacious plan to destroy the whole moon by having the OPA commandeer the Nauvoo from the Mormons and crash the massive vessel into Eros, knocking the moon out of its orbit towards the Sun. The plan ultimately failed however, when the protomolecule at the last possible moment, defied the laws of physics and moved the entire moon out of the Nauvoo's path. After the Eros Incident, Tycho Station had to build a high speed vessel capable of catching up with the Nauvoo so they could retrieve it safely as it was speeding out of The Sol System. The Ring After the OPA recovered the Nauvoo, they kept it from the Mormons and it was retrofitted as the solar system's largest weapons platform battleship and christened Behemoth. The soft curve of its cylinder was studded with six capital-ship class turreted rail guns and the rough extrusions of torpedo tubes. It was manned by a crew of around a thousand people mostly Belters who were well trained but undisciplined. It was simply classified as a Behemoth-class dreadnought, as it was the only ship of its kind. It was rushed into service when the OPA, U.N. and Mars agreed to a joint expedition convoy to the Ring which was now just beyond Uranus' orbit after leaving Venus. When the Rocinante was framed for destroying the U.N destroyer Seung-Un by Clarissa Mao, the Behemoth had no choice but to fire at the Rocinante ''to show that the OPA was not involved. When the ''Rocinante escaped being destroyed by entering the Ring, the Behemoth was one of several ships that followed her into the Ring and entered the Slow Zone. When Martian Marines attacked James Holden and damaged the Ring Station, the station retaliated by lowering the speed limit in the Slow Zone which severely damaged and captured all the ships in the Slow Zone including the Behemoth. After this event, Captain Ashford was relived of duty by his X.O Pa and Chief of Security "Bull" Baca due to being mentally unstable and unable to handle to the desperate situation. The Behemoth then offered to take on all the crews of the crippled convoy and start spinning her habitat drum to provide gravity and safe haven as they were unsure of how long they would be trapped. The situation came to a head when former Captain Ashford who was growing increasingly unstable and desperate, used support from powerful individuals in the convoy including Clarissa Mao and Hector Cortez and loyal members of the crew to retake back control of the Behemoth ''and enact an insane plan of destroying the Sol Ring using a super-charged laser from the Behemoth's Comm Array to protect humanity. This plan was thwarted by an alliance of James Holden and the crew of the ''Rocinante, Chief "Bull" c de Baca, Sam Rosenberg, Anna Volovodov, Monica Stuart and some stranded Martian Marines. Medina Station After James Holden and the Investigator gained access to the Ring Station, shut down its defenses and reactivated the ring system in the slow zone, the OPA retrofitted the Behemoth again and relocated it permanently to the zone, rechristening it Medina Station. The Mormon church, who had originally commissioned the vessel, have continually sued the OPA over their commandeering of the vessel, and as such claim ownership of Medina Station. Because of the delicate political situation, no court has been willing to make a ruling on the case. In the meantime, Medina Station becomes the frontier station for all Human activity through the Ring network. When the first charted planet outside of Sol, called Ilus by the OPA or New Terra by Earth becomes a contested region due to a ship of refugee Belters illegally colonizing the planet. When James Holden and the Rocinante are sent to Ilus/New Terra to mediate the escalating conflict between the Belter colonists and a corporate survey expedition, the Rocinante after a several month long journey to the Ring arrives at Medina Station to resupply for the next leg of the journey to Ilus/New Terra and be briefed on the situation by Fred Johnson who was based at the station. Trivia * "Nauvoo", may be an allusion to Nauvoo, Illinois, one of the earlier settlements of those of the Mormon faith, after fleeing persecution from the nearby state of Missouri. Category:Spaceships